Colleen McCubbin Stepanic: Peak

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Terminal A-WestTicketed PassengersMay 12, 2018 - December 2, 2018

Philadelphia artist Colleen McCubbin Stepanic is known
for her large-scale installations that feature a series of various sized
3-dimensional spirals sourced from her own 2-dimensional paintings on canvas. Stepanic
cuts her original acrylic or oil-based paintings into spirals and sews them
back together to create dimensional conical shapes. The individual forms are
then composed and assembled into multiple clusters to create larger-scale landscape-like
formations. Each form is beautifully detailed with unique patterns and colors--an
inkling of its painted origin. When amassed as a singular construction, the
canvas spirals with their peaks and valleys elude to a dynamic natural
occurrence as they seem to swirl, grow, and push against each other.

Stepanic compares her labor intensive and repetitious working
methods to “geological processes” or active natural processes that transform
the earth—erosion, mountain formations, plate tectonics—some destructive and
others constructive. Stepanic’s processes are like nature as she similarly destroys
and rebuilds her work. She describes her
initial approach as “a series of repetitive aggressive actions as I cut and rip
apart canvases.” Stepanic then begins to recreate the work using thread to
shape it. One after the other, the accumulation of spirals slowly develops into
a larger field of unique, yet similar forms.

Stepanic’s sculptural work and in particular her process,
also draws a connection to human experiences—labor, time, emotion, repetition,
destruction, and transformation. And out
of these commonly shared experiences, Stepanic has created something new and
beautiful.